In this paper, I argue that Carson challenges notions of proximity, intimacy, and familiarity through the dynamics of translation in her 2009 collection Nox. Interpretations of Nox often point to elegy's inability to conjure the deceased. I demonstrate how, in addition to this limit, translation helps define different types of loss, how Carson looks past as much as through her dead brother, and the implications of those choices for the reader of this physically awkward and material-laden work.

This essay interprets the controversial rapper Eminem’s song, “Criminal,” as a Catullan project in establishing distance between the poet and poetic persona, accomplished though very Catullan invective. I show that “Criminal” explicitly disavows the stance of authenticity demanded by the conventions of satire and hip-hop, and that that song’s program to dismantle the imagined conflation of the poet with his poetic persona maps very neatly onto Catullus 16.

It is a commonplace that Thomas Jefferson looked to Roman models for his vision a republic of virtuous farmer-citizens. But what Jefferson reproduced, more precisely, was the Roman elite exploitation of the small farmer idea, which allowed owners of slave-worked estates to fashion themselves as humble farmers for ideological ends.

This paper examines the reception of Vergil’s first Eclogue in the Christian poets Juvencus and Endelechius. Specifically I examine the appropriation of Vergil’s “god in the city” motif as a way to refer to Christ, instead of to the emperor.